Monday, October 1, 2012

Roasted Peach Ice Cream

Say you have a lot of peaches in the house...

... like really a lot...

... well, you can only eat so many.

So I had to find other ways to use them up.

If you don't have an ice cream maker, fresh-fruit ice cream is much harder to make by hand because, without the churning process, it isn't easy to get all the ice crystals out. So I decided to roast the peaches with some brown sugar to cook the water out.

This is a lazy day-off kind of ice cream. You leave the peaches to roast in the oven, then puree the fruit and stir it into the cream. Easy! No egg yolks or custards or anything.

The result is a spicy, kind of peach-pie flavoured ice cream. It's delicious served with a drizzle of caramel sauce or dark chocolate sauce.

Ingredients
500g peaches

5 tablespoons brown sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
A pinch of nutmeg
1½ cups cream

1. Preheat the oven to 190⁰C (375⁰F).
2. Peel the peaches, and slice each one into eight pieces.
3. Place the peaches in an ovenproof dish, add the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg...

... and toss together so that the fruit is coated.

4. Place the dish in the oven for 1½ hours, stirring every 20 minutes, until the syrup has reduced and thickened (as shown below).

5. Remove the dish from the oven and let the peaches cool to room temperature.
6. When the peaches have cooled, add them with the syrup to a blender or food processor and puree.
7. Stir this puree into the 1½ cups of cream. Mix well and then transfer to a large rectangular freezer-safe container. Refrigerate for a couple of hours to chill.
{If you have an ice cream maker, lucky you. I'm hoping to get an ice cream maker attachment for my Kenwood soon, but until that happens I'm still making ice cream by hand. This is why even if you do finally get a fancy stand mixer you do not toss away the trusty hand beater that stood by you for 11 years (and counting).}
8. Remove the container from the fridge and, if you're using an ice cream maker, churn the peach mixture according to the manufacturer's instructions.
9. If not, place the container in the freezer and after every 30 minutes stir the ice cream vigorously, breaking up all the frozen bits around the edges. (The first two times I did this by hand with a spatula but after that, I switched to my electric hand mixer.)
10. Continue this process for about 3 hours, mixing up the ice cream every 30 minutes. Then leave it in the freezer to firm up. (There are some great instructions on David Lebovitz's blog about how to make ice cream by hand.)
11. When serving, if it's too firm to scoop out, take it out of the freezer 10 minutes beforehand and dip the ice cream scoop in hot water before using.